


she dwelt among the untrodden ways

by Hinterlands



Series: they call me the wanderer [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Gen, sole's real name is griffin but she likes indulging piper by using blue, this is basically compulsory heterosexuality and exposition: the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 20:45:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5220212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinterlands/pseuds/Hinterlands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A reflection on a life past, and a future ahead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	she dwelt among the untrodden ways

“Do you ever-” Piper begins, over the rim of a scuffed-up bottle sloshed full of noxious home-brewed booze that could, in practical theory, strip paint from all four of these baby blue walls and eat a cap-sized hole in the earth straight down afterwards, “Do you ever miss him?”

“Miss who?” Blue’s not looking at her, eyes still shielded by the nickel lenses of aviators too bent in the frame to cling to life much longer, and Piper knows the signal in the sudden tension of those stooped shoulders like the shudder of her own breathing; _watch it._

“Your husband.” The syllables crack like slivers of glass between her teeth, and she notes with a modicum of analytic pleasure that Blue’s eyes crinkle slightly at the corners. _Wasn’t expecting that._

“Nate?” The muscles in that strong jaw jump as the other woman chews the question over, pausing to take a long, acerbic swig from her own bottle before her shoulders rise in the barest semblance of a shrug. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Wow. That’s cold even for you, Blue.”

One eyebrow jumps, gravity playing at the corners of her mouth, a kind of stillness to her features that hardly speaks serenity. “What do you want me to do? Throw myself off the roof?”

“Well, I can’t say I’d _want_ you to do that, but you could. Come on, you were married to him for—what, how long?”

“Barely a year.” Another nonchalant roll of the shoulders as Blue takes a longer swallow, drains her bottle all the way down to its pebbled glass bottom. Makes Piper’s throat itch just to watch. “It was kind of a rush thing, you know? We got dumb, I got pregnant, and Nate insisted he needed to do the ‘right thing.’ He was being so fucking noble about it, how could I say no?”

“So you didn’t want to marry him.”

Blue pulls in a long, long breath, reaches up to swipe off her glasses, wipe down an imaginary smudge. “No. Can’t say I did. Can’t say I even wanted to _sleep_ with him, but everyone seemed to think I ought to.”

Piper’s raised brow elicits a breathy bark of laughter. “No, really. I only started dating because my mom was worried that I’d never had a boyfriend, and Nate was…nice enough, and close at hand. I was gonna break it off with him after a month or two, make it as clean and even as I could, but everyone was going on about how _nice_ it was to see me with him, how _happy_ we had to be, and then I just figured, ‘what the hell? I’ll give it a shot.’” _Beat_ , and breath, bottle turning in her palm, iridescent in the moonlight. “I can’t even say I ever really thought about men that way in my life.”

Piper takes a sip of her Dirty Wastelander, holds back a wet, throaty cough for the acid of it. “So, what? That was a problem back then?”

“Probably not the way you’re thinking. Police weren’t gonna come knocking down my door if I went for it, but plenty of folks would have turned their noses up at me.” Blue makes a shuddery little sound, half-stifled, all bitterness. “And plenty did when I ended up pregnant before I got married, so, really, there wasn’t any goddamn point to that charade at all.”

Piper hesitates before reaching over, setting a hand on Blue’s shoulder, feeling heat pulse through the thin fabric of  the other woman’s shirt, even through the Brahmin-hide of her own gloves. No words between them for a long, long while, even as Blue reaches up to set a hand over hers, naked eyes on her face, sidelong but honest, her voice a little hoarse when it comes again; “So, you know. Yeah, I miss him. I’m sorry he died the way he did, and I’m sorry I gave up my time and my body to him, but I’m not so sorry he’s gone.” Set of her shoulders firm, now, resolute, and there’s the Blue she knows, all fire and gnashing teeth. “And even if that makes me a monster or whatever, I’m going to do right by Shaun.”

The question’s rolling on the tip of her tongue ( _did you even want him, Blue? Is he some price you had to pay? To be normal?)_ but she swallows it, for once, because she can see the softening even before it happens, even as Blue stands up on the sunken-in roof-slats and contemplates the bottle in her hand. A rangy, scabrous shape shines pink in the dim light just beyond the bashed-in picket fence, and Blue’s lean arm goes back like she means to topple the moon with just a pithy little hunk of glass. It arcs over the fence, strikes true, sends the mongrel tearing off across the weed-threaded asphalt with a thin yelp in its throat.

Blue smiles, and goddamn her, it’s breathtaking. “And, you know, I’m going to do right by you, too, Piper. I’m gonna do my damnedest.”

“I know, Blue.” A hand laid on the curve of her calf, still feeling that pulsation and heat, the hot blood pumping true in the centuries-old veins laced beneath her fingers, intricate and unknowable as the woman herself. “I know.”

 


End file.
